Splinter

There is nothing worse than trying to pack up a life of immovable possessions.

Just a simple thought and nothing more, that is what I told myself anyway.
As I moved, almost floating, from cardboard container to shelf and vice versa, it was all I could do to cause realism to grip my recoiling mind. How long has it been since I have lived, been alive? The thought caused me to cast my breath outwards quickly and slowly reel it in as a fly fisherman would a hook.

The hook would be easier to remove.

Thousands of hours passed in the few seconds that I stood at the mirror, water finding each crevice of my experienced face before ending its journey in plummet. How I envy the fall, a certainty I have never allowed myself.

It was not until days later that I had realized my unintended starvation. Fierce pains wracked my frame and nothing could comfort my companioned frailty.
How long had it been since morsel?

Gently I allowed myself up from my bed, I knew it would not be long now. The technology that surrounded me echoed with futility as I walked to the covered window. How tattered the hangings of material are, such a place should encourage comfort in these hours not contempt. The view was under whelming in its fictitious attempts at manmade beauty. I returned to the bed feeling slightly defeated.

It was in those last few moments, a breath of seconds relays an eternity if indulged properly, that I found no eyes to weep for me, no flesh to press my flesh and no sounds of whisper upon my behalf in which to find my focus or comfort. Instead I noticed a splinter within my finger tips' flesh and dislodged it. How had it come to be there? I instead found myself noticing how much blood was caused from such a small item, how much damage could be inflicted by something merely out of context.

I became thankful for that mysterious find as I exhaled while technologies monotone song sang around me in black robed choir. If not for a tree used out of context the blood would not have flowed which allows this to be not the story of my end, yet of how my life finally begins.



- an attempt at a short story by J.G. Smith (04/04/06)